Pulte takes Detroit Blight Authority to Pontiac

Bill Pulte and the Detroit Blight Authority are ready to target blight in Pontiac.

At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, county Executive L. Brooks Patterson, Pulte and Pontiac City Council member Don Woodward are expected to announce that the Detroit Blight Authority, the nonprofit for which Pulte is the founder and chairman, will start demolishing blighted homes in the city.

Oakland County Commissioner Mattie Hatchett, a Pontiac Democrat, is also expected to attend the press conference, which will be held at 1:30 p.m. in the Dennis R. Toffolo Conference Room of the Executive Office Building in Waterford Township.

The first house expected to be demolished is located at 70 Thorpe St., north of West Huron Street (M-59) and west of North Johnson Avenue, according to a news release.

The nonprofit had focused on large-scale demolition in contiguous areas of Detroit like near the Eastern Market district and in Brightmoor on the city's northwest side.

In June, the U.S. Department of Treasury granted Michigan approval of $100 million in federal funds for blight removal in Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, Saginaw and Grand Rapids. Those funds were repurposed from the Hardest Hit Fund, part of the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The Michigan State Housing Development Authority estimated that more than 7,000 residential buildings would be razed with those funds.

Pulte, founder and chairman of the nonprofit, said earlier this month that he will no longer focus on structural blight removal in Detroit at the request of city officials. The group will instead focus on nonstructural blight removal there. Targeted structural blight removal efforts are in the works not only in Southeast Michigan, but across the Midwest in states like Indiana and Ohio.

The nonprofit – which razed a large area of blighted homes near Detroit's Eastern Market district in a 10-day period last year – was founded by Pulte, the grandson of Bloomfield Hills-based PulteGroup Inc. founder William J. Pulte and managing partner of Bloomfield Hills-based Pulte Capital Partners LLC.

During the Eastern Market project – 218 lots over 10 blocks – the average cost of demolishing a building was less than $5,000, roughly half of the $9,500 price tag typically associated with publicly funded efforts to demolish a home in Detroit.

A $700,000 to $900,000 plan to demolish at least 117 blighted buildings in the Brightmoor neighborhood will continue if Detroit further pursues the two-phase project, which is about 75 percent complete.

Pulte's blight removal concept can be described as “reverse engineering,” a demolition process that applies the same efficiencies used by PulteGroup in preparing sites for home building.

In May, the organization received a commitment for in-kind office space at the Dan Gilbert-owned Chrysler House (formerly the Dime Building), 719 Griswold St.